Uncertainty in measurement and total error: different roads to the same quality destination?
-
Ian Farrance
,
Tony Badrick
Abstract
The debate comparing the benefits of measurement uncertainty (uncertainty in measurement, MU) with total error (TE) for the assessment of laboratory performance continues. The summary recently provided in this journal by members of the Task and Finish Group on Total Error (TFG-TE) of the EFLM put the arguments into clear perspective. Even though there is generally strong support for TE in many laboratories, some of the arguments proposed for its on-going support require further comment. In a recent opinion which focused directly on the TFG-TE summary, several potentially confusing statements regarding ISO15189 and the Evaluation of measurement data – Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement (GUM) were again promulgated to promote TE methods for assessing uncertainty in laboratory measurement. In this opinion, we present an alternative view of the key issues and outline our views with regard to the relationship between ISO15189, uncertainty in measurement and the GUM.
Author contributions: All the authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.
Guarantor: IF.
Research funding: None declared.
Employment or leadership: None declared.
Honorarium: None declared.
Competing interests: The funding organization(s) played no role in the study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the report for publication.
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©2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Observing an analyzer’s operational life cycle: a useful management tool for clinical laboratories
- Reviews
- Personalized laboratory medicine: a patient-centered future approach
- Circular RNAs: a new class of biomarkers as a rising interest in laboratory medicine
- Mini Review
- Impact of interactions between drugs and laboratory test results on diagnostic test interpretation – a systematic review
- Opinion Paper
- Uncertainty in measurement and total error: different roads to the same quality destination?
- Guidelines and Recommendations
- Joint EFLM-COLABIOCLI Recommendation for venous blood sampling
- General Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine
- Evidence for the positive impact of ISO 9001 and ISO 15189 quality systems on laboratory performance – evaluation of immunohaematology external quality assessment results during 19 years in Austria
- Effects of high-dose, intravenous lipid emulsion on laboratory tests in humans: a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, clinical crossover trial
- Commutability of the certified reference materials for the standardization of β-amyloid 1-42 assay in human cerebrospinal fluid: lessons for tau and β-amyloid 1-40 measurements
- Failure rate prediction of equipment: can Weibull distribution be applied to automated hematology analyzers?
- Evaluation of serum alkaline phosphatase measurement through the 4-year trueness verification program in China
- Increased serum concentrations of soluble ST2 predict mortality after burn injury
- The clinical significance of borderline results of the Elia CTD Screen assay
- Reference Values and Biological Variations
- Reference intervals for 33 biochemical analytes in healthy Indian population: C-RIDL IFCC initiative
- Cancer Diagnostics
- BCL2L12 improves risk stratification and prediction of BFM-chemotherapy response in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia
- Cardiovascular Diseases
- The correlation between glucose fluctuation from self-monitored blood glucose and the major adverse cardiac events in diabetic patients with acute coronary syndrome during a 6-month follow-up by WeChat application
- Diabetes
- Impact of blood cell counts and volumes on glucose concentration in uncentrifuged serum and lithium-heparin blood tubes
- Letters to the Editor
- Standard process-oriented workflow introduces pre-analytical error when used in large study sample batches
- Comparison of three staining methods in the automated digital cell imaging analyzer Sysmex DI-60
- Detection of Plasmodium falciparum using automated digital cell morphology analyzer Sysmex DI-60
- Serum ischemia-modified albumin concentration may reflect long-term hypoxia in chronic respiratory disease: a pilot study
- Wet absorptive microsampling at home for HbA1c monitoring in diabetic children
- Serum endocan levels in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a potential role in the evaluation of susceptibility to exacerbation
- Analytical and clinical validation of the new Roche Elecsys Vitamin D Total II assay
- Analytical validation of two second generation thyroglobulin immunoassays (Roche and Thermo Fisher)
- Omission of preservatives during 24-h of urine collection for the analysis of fractionated metanephrines enhance patient convenience
- Transient monoclonal gammopathy in a 2-year-old child with combined viral and bacterial infection
- Nephelometric assay of urine free light chains: an alternative and early clinical test for Bence-Jones protein quantification
- Congress Abstracts
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- 50th National Congress of the Italian Society of Clinical Biochemistry and Clinical Molecular Biology (SIBioC – Laboratory Medicine)
- Revolution drives Evolution – from measuring to understanding: Annual meeting of Swiss Society of Clinical Chemistry (SSCC) in Bern, November 15-16 2018
